It Could Be Worse
by RadarRun
Summary: MGS4 Otacon searches for a perfect moment that was never really there. Oh, and also a multiverse is accidentally created. Yes, I'm being perfectly serious.
1. Prologue

Three things motivate men.

Power.

Lust.

And grief.

If one does not get you, one of the others will. And as much as any philosophers (no, not those Philosophers) tell you otherwise, this is always the case.

Three things that men have:

Strength.

Intelligence.

Charisma.

Few have one, even fewer have all three. Whichever you have, you will use it, whether you intend to or not. Not to do so is to deny your nature.

Hal had no need for power, and lust, as far as he could see, was a rather red-blooded (and four-letter) word that happened mostly to other people. During his college years, there had been rather a lot of shouting and banging going on behind him when he was engrossed by something else (it had seemed very important at the time), and he had the sneaking suspicion that it was around that time that he should have been getting all his lust, as it were, in.

…

Bubblegum Crisis, that's what it was. He had been_ really _into Bubblegum Crisis.

And as for power, well, he had been _told_ he was powerful. Usually by kindly men with thick accents and nice suits, who then usually got noticeably less kindly (and developed much thicker accents, surprisingly) when he refused to acquiesce to their demands. But mostly, as far as he could see, he was powerful only when used as a pawn. Which he was _fine_ with. It was only those with great _physical_ power who regularly got into trouble of the arrgh-crack-squish-bleed variety, and Hal, who on one memorable occasion had had to have help lifting the expanded Sunday edition of the paper, was not one of them. He was okay with most circumstances provided they gave him enough drawing paper and something intriguingly circuity to play with. If he could just stop armed militants bursting through his door and trying to convince him, though not in so few words, to use his power for evil, his life would have been perfect.

But grief.

Some men are just born under an auspice. Hal would have dismissed outright the idea of a personality gene, but, as he got older, the idea of an indefensible fault in his blood; a black smudge somewhere in the double helix, loomed large in his mind. Everyone who he had loved, he had lost.

Was about to lose.

He put the idea far from his mind; tried to work around it, as a mountaineer works around the crack in a narrow path. With about the same level of success. His thoughts tumbled down again: genetics. Genetics had not been kind to him. Names and faces, caught at different angles, as the eye does, lined up and filed past him, the sounds of laughter (or the screaming oh god the screaming but what was worse was the sigh of the soon to knows it's hopeless) echoed past him.

The doctors had not given David long. That was three months ago.

He was not allowed back in the sickroom. For his own good. (Whether the doctor had been referring to him or David he had not said.)

He would be allowed a chance to say goodbye.

It was not enough.

* * *

He was not selfish.

He was never really allowed the chance to be selfish, and probably would not take it if offered. When the meek inherited the earth, Hal would be right at the back of the queue, and would say "oh no really, I couldn't possibly" when offered his slice. For it is difficult to be selfish without a self, and Hal's mind was moored to his body with so silvery and insubstantial a thread that desires of the flesh and the myriad earthly thralls found it difficult to work up the enthusiasm. They gave up, dispirited, when Hal drifted back from chasing a promising variable and noticed them for the first time in five hours of solid tempting. (Good quality, workmanlike tempting, too. None of the cheap stuff.)

(Neither was he the kind to go mwahaha. He had heard too many stories from David about this particular kind of megalomaniac, told in a tone of exasperated wonder. "He had me pinned in a corner," David would say, shaking his head ruefully, kicking the snow from his boots, "and he just started... _talking_. On and on." David would continue, in a low voice, "All about how I had made my final mistake, how the world was finally his. The prototype plans were stting _right there_,_ in my eyeline_, and he's trying to talk me to death. And the laugh- mwahaha. Mwahahaha. Ugh. Kinda makes me sick just to think about it." Dealings with Philanthropy and the curiously... _colourful_ opponents it brought them into contact with had more or less, (he hoped) immunized him against this kind of behavior.)

However.

Something inside his head had gone snap. Looking back (if that was possible, given the nature of events; "back" becomes a relative concept very easily) he could not identify what it was. It was not selfishness, and he did not let his emotions over come him for very long. (All he had felt was… numb.) But, at that moment, something had snapped in his head, and the desperate survival instinct of the prey had kicked in- no no, that's mine, give it back, don't take that from me, leave me that at least, leave me that- like a starving man tugging at scraps, he had dug in his heels and, with a last flail of his intellectual vigour, had hit upon a plan.

Surprisingly simple.

All you had to do was think.

Intellect, powered by grief.

God help us all.

* * *

He had begun to think about... perfection.

He had begun to think about it seriously. Quite a lot, really. For hours on end. Continuously. Over. And over. And over. Again. Couldn't get it out of his head. Odd, that. (He had heard that this was a sign of illness, psychological sickness. He didn't think so. He didn't feel different. Was acting perfectly rationally.)

"Because, you see, there is such a thing as perfection," he had told the wall.

"I see it, sometimes." This quietly, in the tone of a closet fanatic. "When you stay awake long enough, if you work hard enough on something… you see it." The eyes glittered, under the glass. "Only for a split second, but you do. And it can solve everything, if you only see it. Ha," he said quietly, "But you don't believe me, do you?" This he addressed to the fireplace, who seemed unmoved.

"But I saw it the other night. The perfect equation. I won't lie to you, I'd been having a difficult time. I'd…he's… but never mind. And it… jumped out at me, really. It's quite simple, once you realise the laws of physics are rather arbitrary. You can persuade X to be nearly anything, and if you can fool X, you can infiltrate maths, and if you can do that, you can get X past the rest of physics too."

"And… and it's always so fleeting. " His hands dropped, weighed by some memory.

"But… I can see it. " he said. "In things. In places. In… times."

He's wrong. There is no such thing as the perfect equation.

Equations are created by humans, in an attempt to get the universe to stay put and stop squirming for five minutes.

Humans are flawed.

And the human mind, it has not often been said, is like a rubber sheet. Thoughts are lead weights. They distort things around them. You may not mean to make a mistake, but you will. You may not mean to remember something, but you will.

God help them all.

* * *

He had studied the machine uneasily. It had the black, oily quality of something that has poked its insidious way through quite a few dimensions to be there, but wasn't letting on.

(If ever you see a rip in your bedroom wall, late, in the dead of night, and a faint, whispering voice chatter through it; look through it, if you are brave enough, and you will see a grin. The teeth of the grin will be that colour.) It had the squat, greasy smugness of a machine that knows it is smarter than the operator, but is also smart enough not to let on. And it seemed to be leering at him. Hal screwed up all his courage, and peered into the slit running horizontally through the casing of the machine. Inside, he could make out...  
a glint of toothed wheel, the rounded sheen of two iron spheres, and blackness. Nothing more.

Hmm.  
The Koppelthorn engine was, to put it mildly, an odd duck. The kind of duck that quacks in colours and knocks over Tokyo. He had been given it in the spirit of good-riddance by a friend in the military, and had rightly refused to tangle with it for niggling fear of explosion. Nevertheless, times were desperate, and Hal was forced to do something he never thought he'd do.

He opened the manual.

" 'Thank you for purchasing the Koppelthorn Engine. Be careful in operation, as this may be the first non-Boolean operating system you have ever used…' He frowned, skipped a few pages. "Blah blah blah… 'untold temporal havoc', so on so forth… 'mac compatible'…"

He threw the manual aside; it landed with a _pflapf _on the workbench, where it coughed up a handful of dust. This was no good. Clearly, precision engineering was required.

He took a deep breath, and, taking careful aim, hit the device with a hammer.

* * *

He looked, with bleary eyes, at the screen before him, at the finally compiled code. It was an… odd programme. A unique one, certainly.

Perhaps that was something of an understatement.

He had the sneaking suspicion it could rip holes in time.

Whenever it pleased.

Whenever _he_ pleased.

Something more, he felt, was called for. He cleared his throat.

"Ahem." he said.

"Mwahaha. Mwahahahahahaha."

It rang hollow, somehow.

And all it would take was to push a button.

He frowned at the machine. Normally Hal was quite conversant (chatty, even) with technology, but this time he hesitated before initiating the programme. This lapse in curiosity was rare enough in itself, as his poor, beleaguered oft-burned eyebrows would concur. He was, in all truth, a coward. And he had a sneaking suspicion that he was dealing with something that he probably couldn't (shouldn't) handle.

(And a large part of his brain was pointing out excitedly that a shape-shifting robot assassin (inevitably with, yes a thick accent, but no suit) would probably become involved.)

But he thought on- of perfection, and loss, and whether or not, he thought blackly, that karma owed him this at least, and of love, on the battlef…

(He groaned. Age gives one perspective. Well, even if he could only go back briefly, he could at least try and do something about _that_ particular moment.)

He took a deep, wobbly breath.

One stroke of a key…

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTES:  
Well, I finally posted it. Damn you, damn you all to hell etc. I don't even know what you'd call this- alternate continuity what-if fic? Bleh. Anyway, please ignore my entirely disreputable prologue, if it suits you, and skip straight to the main: this one promises to be dense, nerdish, deeply weird, but fun.

Well, for _me_ anyway.  
Disclaimer, of sorts: I'd be terrifically_ flattered _if Konami kicked off over this, but Bigod, lads,_ I don't think it'll happen_. Besides, Hideo Kojima (_insert guitar riff_) knows I'm joking. Because Hideo Kojima (_insert guitar riff_) knows _everything_.


	2. A Spanner In The Works of Time

Timeline ?: (x-y)=?(?:?) (N:?)

An adrenaline plateau, was how he would describe it. If he'd had the words. If he'd had the _time_ to have the words. If the aforementioned condition hadn't _prevented_ him from having the words. Lone infiltrator he may be, and nervous as hell with it, but there came a point somewhere after the three-hour mark where you just… loosened up a little. Perhaps it was the power of the newly-acquired FA-MAS in his hands, weighty with the thrill of the stolen. Perhaps it was the ten man team of guards who he had just terminally dealt with. Maybe- just _maybe_- it was the diazepam. But this whole place- Shadow Moses, was it? Had taken on a slightly unreal aspect. After the fight with the robotic ninja, he was starting to think of the place as a game.

Perhaps that's why, dazzled as he was by the adrenaline- or yes, maybe the diazepam- that he did not take as much care as he should have, did not watch where he put his feet, as he entered the next room.

()

It was…

White.

Very white. And cold.

With not much else to recommend it.

It had the odd quality of being infinitely huge and matchbox-small at the same time.

That's enough to put anybody off.

Snake stared, open-mouthed, into the abyss. It did not stare back. There was a very, very small part of his brain, clinging onto the amygdala and babbling on in a white-jacket-with-buckles kind of way about proportions and space and space-time and reality and lack of same, and wasn't there supposed to be a mission? but this was overruled in favour of simply staring. And staring. And staring.

He was so occupied when he heard a voice behind him.

"Huh."

He spun.

"Never thought that would work."

And that, thought the rapidly-collapsing rational part of his brain, was the cry of the _scientist_. The soldier's only natural enemy.

Nerves pushed to their limits, he raised his gun with a crisp jerk.

"Who's there?" he called.

A man appeared from the middle distance. 5"7', slight build, mop of grey-brown hair. Would have been around forty years old. About as out of place as an iceberg in the desert, but then so was everything else in this place.

"Hi," said the older man.

The gods of understatement find solace in moments like these.

Snake relied on instinct. He raised the gun again. "Tell me who the hell you are or I'll blow your brains out." Only the mildest flicker of his eyes revealed the gun was, in fact, an M4, and therefore capable of dispensing nothing more terrible than a good night's sleep.

This apparently gave the other man pause for thought- before he laughed, warmly.

"Do you know what, Snake? I _don't _blame you."

* * *

Snake was not confused, or fearful. So much of his runtime was taken up with processing backorders of both that he had no room, as it were, for fresh. The man behind him was looking with interest at their surroundings, or lack thereof. That is to say, he was carefully not looking at Snake, who found this behaviour odd. He tried to be rational. In an admittedly short career, he had seen much that would have sent the average man screaming to the grave. This was just… _slightly_ weirder, that's all. Work logically. The man was not an enemy; or was at least playing the part. Had scientist written all over him, in big letters. And probably suffering a mild case of shell shock, judging by the unbearably calm attitude. He had to know something.

"So what is it? Hallucinogenic gas? Malfunctioning nanomachines? Don't tell me- dimensional rifts caused by some kind of... resonant... reality... cascade?"

"What?" came the reply. The other man was staring at his hands. His calmness was almost obscene. Snake continued trying to keep calm, despite worrying messages from some of the baser areas his spinal column to run and hide up a nice tall tree until all the weird went away.

"What's going on in here?"

"In here? Nothing." Said the other man. "That's kind of the point."

Snake's mind flung itself into a heap. It had given up.

"If I've done my calculations right, that is."

The dreaminess in his voice was oddly disquieting. Snake sat beside him. "What are you talking about?"

The other man smiled apologetically. "Well, if I'm right, this place exists outside of normal space and time. Sorry. Thought you knew."

The resounding silence made it clear precisely how Snake felt about scientists, non-existent spaces and indeed, the universe in general. (If his mind was functioning, it was considering the possibility of giving up the whole super-soldier thing, and maybe finding a nice cottage somewhere, far, far, far away from everything else, with roses round the door, and hens clucking in the yard, and of course a gun rack you could arm a small country with.) His confusion (but where would the huskies fit in?) was such that he did not feel the slim, scarred fingers that took a hold of his chin, and turned his face incrementally towards the light.

"Hmm. You look different too. Blockier. More… squared. But that's only to be expected."

The intimacy was… unsettling. Normally this kind of intrusion from someone he had met only hours ago would have earned the intruder a set of broken fingers. But this man felt… different. Confident. Grown. A patina of cynicism that Snake associated with old soldiers; those who had long since abandoned the notion of glory through war. In short; no-one he would have expected to find on the mission. And this unnerved him.

"No, this whole thing is the result of time travel."

"Time travel?"

"Time travel. You won't remember it. And repeating people is a bad habit. You should get out if it- but you won't, of course. You're too stubborn. I should know."

"How… how can it be time travel?"

"It could be. But it could be something else. After all, time travel is technically impossible, so maybe this is something else." The other man tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe this is some kind of hallucination caused by the enormous strain the mission is putting on your body. Or maybe it's a dream. By your future self. Or hey, ooh, repressed memories expressed as a dream by your older self! Wouldn't that be neat?"

Snake (bravely) attempted to take it one step at a time.

"So... so you are from the future?"

"If I'm real, then yes."

Few other people needed to qualify their statements like that.

"And… does my future self know you?"

"Uh… yes. Unreservedly, I can say yes." said the other man, dropping his head to hide a half-smile.

_Definitely_ not anyone he knew.

* * *

"So you created this… place?"

"I think so. Probably out of wishful thinking more than anything else."

"I knew nothing good would come of science."

The other man laughed, giving Snake a chance to study his face. The face was… intriguing. Something just on the cusp of his memory nagged at him, begging him to remember, but he felt he would be lucky to find his own goddamn feet, given the circumstances. Large, dark grey eyes, untidy mop of brown-grey hair- it was something infuriating- a face he had seen before. But he couldn't be. All the personnel in Shadow Moses, it being necessary for them to have no previous allegiances, had been brought straight from training- and this man. It looked like he'd been struck hard in the face with twenty years. He had heard that prolonged exposure to an industrial environment could cause premature aging, but not over the course of a day.

And of course, there was gene therapy. But who would ever believe that could cause such severe accelerated aging?

"And why did you create it?" he asked.

"Well," the other man had shifted uncomfortably, like Frankenstein when informed what _precisely _had happened to the windmill. "it was for quite a selfish reason. But hey; outside space and time, huh? No consequences."

Snake was intrigued in spite of himself. Intrigued, and not a little worried.

"Why?"

"You see… as I say, in the future… I know you. And… you change. Not in a normal way, either." The other man's face visibly dropped- the full weight of twenty plus years suddenly surfacing.

Suddenly he remembered something- from an advertisement, or perhaps an old girlfriend, or maybe even just a song from long ago.

Worry.

Worry makes you look older too.

* * *

The other man had finally squared up.

"I just wanted five minutes..."

As the man poured out his story, Snake found his mind wandering. He was talking about this mission- interesting things too, if slightly unbelievable- and certain tricks and traps he would face, and although his subconsciously duly noted these down, he found he was focusing more on deep, regular breathing.

Because he didn't believe the time travel story for a moment. Who could? The trick was to keep this man talking for long enough until he could call for back up, or, failing that, get his hands on a much bigger gun.

That seemed to solve most problems.

He said as much.

"You don't believe me?"

Note the slightly injured tone there, said Snake's inner pragmatist. The man pops into existence four feet in front of you in the middle of Sarte's dream holiday hotspot explaining that he's your best friend (he was undecided on whether or not to cloak that phrase in quotation marks, not yet) from the future, and _he's_ offended because you don't believe him. This is one sick puppy we've got here.

"Of course I don't believe you!"

"Well, what other explanations are there?"

"… The diazepam! I took three tablets before I got here. They could be causing me to hallucinate."

The other man shook his head, smiled wryly.

"Snake. diazepam doesn't cause hallucinations."

"… That's just what I'd expect a hallucination to say!"

"I can see you're really upset about this. I think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over… Dave."

Snake/Dave looked at him. The half-smile was back.

"It might balance out the effects of all that _diazepam_."

Paranoia reared in David's mind.

"_How do you know my name_!"

The other man shrugged ruefully.

"I told you, Dave. Things change in the future. You change. Hence, all this."

So, stripped of all other options, Snake had done what was very possibly the bravest thing he had ever done.

He had asked why.

The older man had sucked air in suddenly through his teeth, in the way of used car-salesmen the world over when asked what the blackened crunchy bits on the passengers' seats were.

(That, if nothing else, had marked him out as an engineer; that noise, combined with the high frenetic whine of discovery and, in Snake's experience, screams, were the basic vocabulary of the common or garden scientist-for-hire (or, as the case may be, scientist-for-kidnap.) He had given the impression that the tale in the telling would need ten thousand clean pages, an dozen pens and a stack of bibles to swear on; he implied epic cycles, wheels within wheels, a thousand elephants and possibly the Mormon Tabernacle choir (for the slow moments). Cecil B De Mille, he implied, would have to have been taken out and given air after merely seeing the précis.

He had settled, instead, on a short history: Shadow Moses (yes, here and now, though "Now" was relative at the moment and, frankly, uncertain), the tanker, sojourns in the wild, a return to battle, betrayal, a loss of hope, then lighting, then, finally, sunlight.

Snake had listened patiently, and had only one question at the end: "why do they only ever come in pairs?"

The other man had looked puzzled for a moment before some internal needle had swung due Snake and he had laughingly explained, No, when I said _paradox_…

* * *

Hal was struggling, and he knew it. It was a problem he often had, though not often in this context- Language has evolved for the body, not the spirit. Once the dark bit behind the eyes started acting up, language fell by the wayside as a hopelessly inadequate method of communication.

(Admittedly, he normally encountered this problem when talking about giant robots- "really, really cool" fails to impress investors somehow.)

"Everything I had has been taken away from me, and I just feel… cheated, you know? If I had known then what I know now- I wouldn't have wasted time. All I wanted was one perfect moment- and you- here-now- you _are_ perfect."

The boy just looked confused. Not surprising. So was he.

"Give me this, this one thing."

Nostalgia is a killer, but, just once…

"Stay like this", he said.

There were no walls to create it, but the words echoed.

"Stay…"

Gently- as gently as a moment passing- Hal leaned forwards, and planted a kiss- little more than a pressing of the lips- on David's cheek. The boy jerked backwards, nearly falling.

Hal regarded him with steady eyes- eyes that resolutely did not cry.

"Stay." He said. "Stay this way. Stay the way you are, and never change. Don't age. Don't breathe. Stay like this- forever."

Tears burned in his eyes. He had sworn he wouldn't cry. What was there to cry about? Where he was now, where there was no past and certainly no future, where this (and back then, back now, he was still a) boy had his whole life to live ahead of him, not knowing about betrayal or conspiracy or the heavy, aching weight of_ time_, time that was always running out, time they were always running from…

There was only this moment.

That was all he could create.

It should have been perfect.

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Story Ideas For Tangent Universes That Were Written, But Then Abandoned As Being Too Damn Weird no. 42:

The huge white space glowed and pulsed peacefully. The trained ear could hear the serene hum and coo it made; it might have been the music of the spheres, or it might have been a car alarm going off really far in the distance. Depends on how you listen to it, really.

Snake was sitting alone, in a welter of confusion. The older man- the suspiciously _comfortable_ man- had left, trailing glittering spots from the corners of his eyes. He had muttered something about "any second now, you'll be okay", taken only a few steps, and then-somehow- faded into the middle distance.

It was a good trick, and Snake wished to emulate it. So far, however, "any second now" had not happened. (Little did he realise that, even then, the universe's sense of temporal order had realised what had happened and was curving back, like a great and terrible rubber band, to ping him back to his own time. It's probably better that he doesn't know this though, because the knowledge that one is about to be flung end-over-end backwards through untime and unspace like the Spitball Of The Gods often offends and unsettles.)

In the middle distance, a man appeared- shortish, black hair, middle-aged, glasses, of Japanese descent; a certain impish cast to his features that suggested one who, lacking an exciting, action-filled daily life, creates his own in his head. He appeared to be enjoying the scenery, such as was.

When he caught sight of Snake, his face split into a disbelieving, watermelon grin.

"_Oi! Oi_! _Omae Da_! _Sorriddo Sunekku_!"

He ran towards Snake, grin still stretching from ear to ear.

"I can't believe it! You! Here! Who'd have thought it?" he said.

"And you are…?" said Snake weakly.

"Oh man, I'm your worst fucking nightmare." said the man cheerfully. "Oh _man_. I'm not surprised you're trying to escape, son- you should see some of the things I've got planned out for your universe. I'm gonna go through that place with a _chainsaw;_ fuckin' _slash and burn _game design. Here," he slung a companionable arm as far as he could reach across Snake's shoulders, "let me give you a little _guided tour_ of what I've got planned for game two."

Snake's Japanese was rusty, so he could translate only snatches of the man's scattergun speech: "First of all, turns out... the _first ten minutes_, right, and then... beat the pregnant woman senseless, then steal her dog-tags, so... cigarettes, as _usual_, and then... taking photographs! Fucking _photographs_, like "What am I, fucking _Vogue_ Magazine?" And then Ocelot, he..."BRUTHA"... so you get dumped in the freezing ocean."

The man stared, starry-eyed, at some perfect inner vision.

"Oh, man" he said. "You should see as well, the guy we get to replace you. Whoo boy! "Pantywaist" doesn't begin to describe it. See, turns out... girlfriend called "Rose", face like a sack of drowned kittens, I'm telling you... cyborg ninja bitchfight...a vampire, kind of... this tremendously fat man on rollerskates... back and forth, like a fuckin' _yo-yo_ trying to cool these bombs, I'm telling ya, it's hilarious... Gurgalon... stolen pants... sniper rifle... oh, and let me tell you, Otacon? Right up the... His _stepmother_, for god's sake!... So anyway, turns out-starts acting really suspicious, hem-hem... running all over the place, (ha-ha) buck naked and freezing... Hollow Men...Doc Octopus Mecha tentacles, and a moustache... nanobots... president AI... dog tags... kangaroo notebook... and then he crashes it into Capitol Building. And then it turns out it's all a dream. Kinda. It's really a _deconstruction_ of The Sequel."

The man leaned heavily of Snake; tears of pride, or joy, glinted in either eye.

"Man," he said, "you just wait until Guns Of the Patriots. We're _really_ going to (CENSORED) you up then."

He patted Snake happily on the back. "So! Good luck with all that, then. I've got to be going." He made as if to move away.

"Wait!" said Snake, summoning as much language as he could under the circumstances. "Why are _you_ here?"

The man stopped.

"Me? Isn't it obvious?" he shrugged "I live here."

And he disappeared into the whiteness.

(Yes, (a certain video game producer) lives in the space between universes. HE'S JUST THAT COOL.) Also not that the word behind that "(CENSORED)" up there is probably "age".


	3. Still Insists He Sees The Ghosts

It is very possible that you have never been present at the collapsing of an artificially- created time-loop. There is a reason for this.

Number one, only the most dementedly mad (_or someone with a very good reason_) would create one. Number two, it is uniquely unpleasant. For if time, as those bright young things at Harvard seem to think, is a dimension, then when you pass through a time loop, you are essentially losing a dimension, very briefly. Imagine an origami man being turned into a flat illustration in the space of a nanosecond. Imagine how he feels about the situation. In other words, it's a bit… _squashy_. Like playing sardines, except instead of other people you have the elemental forces.

Now imagine you're doing it with a headache and a diazepam hangover.

… See?

And _that's_ why he's the hero.

Not to mention some… _disturbing_ memories.

He had the sense of something… _big_ going on. And while he was sure the solo mission against hundreds of armed enemies to destroy the portable death machine was fairly gigantic, something was nagging at the back of his mind. That fact that the "something" existed in a now-defunct dimension, if anything, made it worse. It makes your mind feel… incomplete.

But there was something that had crawled in, deep, where the silly rational mind wouldn't try to mar it with insidious logic.

Avoid snipers.

Avoid psychics.

Something about an ocelot.

Avoid ocelots. (Good advice at any time, he thought.)

Something… about a man. An older man. With glasses, or the _suggestion_ of glasses.

What did he want? Why was he…? Or rather, why was he?

Get the job done.

He lurched away, head still buzzing.

* * *

The noise was like an old door opening; it started low, and jagged, and suggested nasty things in the woodshed, and things that go "uuurgh-blargh" in the night. Gradually, it started to smooth out, widening in timbre and range, taking on more the aspect of a tranquilized frog, or perhaps a submarine with serious bronchitis. Finally, it reached a more human level, and could be traced back to the mouth of a small, slim man, lying curled protectively around a laptop and a bottle of whisky. The noise could be attributed to the whisky, and its after-effects. The fact that the bottle was only one-third empty, yet still have the aforementioned woodshed-frog-submarine-Uuuurgh-blargh effect could be attributed in part to his small, slim frame and in part to a life lived otherwise blamelessly, with few adventures in his youth, and a lot of Friday nights spent indoors. These Fridays indoors could be largely attributed to his laptop. So it's nice to know that life, like the man's current position, was more or less circular.

A few hours later, this man will wake; he will look at the contents of his laptop, wonder what exactly he was trying to achieve, and decide never to try anything so stupid and pointless again. With the squint of one whose contact lenses are still happily watching from the bedside table, he will delete the page upon page of equation and code and never think of them again.

A few seconds after that, he will remember why he started drinking.

It will strike him, all over again.

Let us draw the veil of charity over this scene.

* * *

The great wonder of the computer age is the inconsistency.

In a way, it is fitting- for the computer age evolved from the industrial age. The same age that saw the mass- production of goods saw the mass-production of mistakes. The machines of the industrial age which tirelessly reproduced a single mistake- giving us interesting things like shoes with the heels on the front or ET for the Atari- spawned the machines of the present, which reproduce virtual mistakes with the diligence and loyalty of a not-particularly-bright Labrador pup. But of course, with machines, you have so much more variety. You can make so many different kinds of mistake. That's progress. Because wherever you have a middleman, you have misinterpretation. And the computer is a perfect middleman. A finger slips on a key- and suddenly the world changes.

Imagine a rope unravelling.

Imagine a nest of snakes.

Monks who copied and recopied the Book of Kells by hand made mistakes. These mistakes were so rare that they are now pointed out as interesting oddities. They are, in fact, valuable. Computers, dumb and trusting to the point of uselessness, will let any mistake go by.

Hal did not make mistakes.

Not in normal circumstances.

Grief, as has been mentioned, can do funny things. It can inspire. It can blind.

One wrong stroke of a key, and everything changes.

There is no such thing as perfect code.

God help us all.

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

(But of course, all you smart young temporal mechanics out there have spotted the deliberate mistake in the first paragraph. "Aha", you have said knowingly, shaking your collective heads and perhaps indulging in a wry communal smirk, "but there is only one reason he would feel like that. The loop isn't closed". To you, I say "congratulations". You get the Blue wig (unlimited O2 gauge whee!)

But enough of my blather. Now the alterna-world scenarios begin. All critiscism appreciated, and of course anybody with any non-canon ideas they'd like to see explored (that they don't mind me inexpertly poking about in), please leave a comment or send a message.


	4. 1: A Bad Case of the Diplomatics

Timeline A: (x-y)=0.5 (1:11) (N:corrupt)

In all the infinite spectrum upon infinite spectrum of man's knowledge, many things have been achieved. They have measured the heartbeat of the earth, they have coaxed sweet sound from the dull, and they have lulled the very stars themselves from their slumber, to make them dance at the bidding of even the common man. But in all this boundless knowledge, the spiral-within-a-spiral intricacy of everything there is, no one man, brilliant as he or she may be, has ever, ever, figured out the point of caviar.

Except the caviar sellers.

Maybe they know something we don't.

Ye god. Was this a sign of old age? It must be. He shook his head sharply, sending a nearby diplomat, nervous already, into a semi-dignified crouch.

Which was fair enough. Diplomats, on the whole, tended to run to thin and blade-like, not to say waifish. The suggestion was always of silver cigarette cases, fountain pens and perhaps, in the past, lazy days spent punting along famous collegiate rivers with people named Sebastian. This great hulking brute, with his six feet of height, his eyepatch and suspiciously _militant_ bulge in his jacket, looked as if the only reason he would be at the function was to rob the guests, or possibly just burn the place to the ground and sow the land with salt.

He turned, sending the diplomat further to the wall.

"Caviar sellers." The behemoth growled.

"Don't trust them."

And walked off, casting a visibly ominous shadow. The corridor seemed to be darkening ahead of him, although possibly just because he was blocking out most of the light. Probably a bodyguard, thought the diplomat. For a ridiculously important person.

Snake walked away, letting his thoughts drift from his present trivialities. (He had dismissed caviar as a topic for later evaluation.) He was uncomfortable here, and people were uncomfortable with him. The life of a statesman was one of finesse and élan, (two words which incidentally had to be translated for him) qualities which he possessed only in bursts. In these narrow rococo (was it rococo? One of these art styles where they flung gold glitter at everything anyway) halls, the emphasis ironically was on subtlety and delicacy of touch- a word here, a murmured reprimand there, a swift joke to ensure good relations. Good relations. People didn't_ like _it, the colonel had told him chidingly, if you pulled out a Biretta in the middle of negotiations and I quote "vow to put a hole in you the size of goddamn Alaska unless you give up the goddamn walking nuke". People got _upset_. Negotiations were _disrupted_. The prime minister suffered a _mild attack _of something or other.

His style was more direct, and they disliked him for it.

Even the goddamn tie was too tight.

Now, if he had had his own way…

There wouldn't be a need for this conference. No need to put two men across a table and call it an excuse for a party. If he had had his way, this could have been solved five months ago, with all the expenditure required being the price of two packets of cigarettes and a half-a- litre of coolant spray. He had seen the blueprints. It would have been so easy. In through the side gates, then box it over to the back door (they never guarded the back door), a few guards inside, (though nothing a swift, muffled dart to the neck couldn't deal with) and then…

He stopped. He realized that he had unconsciously stepped into the shadows provided by a large decorative urn, and, with a deepening sense of shame, recognized the peripheral eyestrain he could feel was the semiautonomous search for that tantalizingly now-you-see-me blip of the nanoradar in the corner of his vision.

The elderly Chinese lady he had been reflexively drawing a bead on did not look that much of a threat. Rather the opposite really. He sighed deeply, and continued on his way to the banquet hall.

National heroes are expected to behave in a certain way. If they have won their acclaim on the field of battle, Snake had long ago realized, then they were expected to continue their glorious tradition on their return home by putting on a suit and making extremely small talk with the people they had formerly been attempting to kill.

It could have been done, the Colonel had said, Oh yes. With the right men, the right equipment, they could make Philanthropy entirely black-ops and the world would be a little more oblivious and a little more safe.

If they had had the right men.

They had had Snake.

He, apparently, was not enough.

No, he thought dully, as he rounded the corner, following the light and the sound of chatter, just a little too late to be fashionably so; what you needed was someone on mission control, preferably someone who was involved in the original Shadow Moses debacle: who knew the Metal Gears, knew them inside and…

He stopped.

The man ()

And blinked.

Before he was guided to a group of outstretched hands and smiling faces, he thought he had seen… someone.

Which was ridiculous. He himself was now well over forty years old (felt like 60 sometimes), and the older man had been well into his forties when they met. He knew that people could age prematurely, but none could reverse it. And yet…

(He pulled the Colonel over to the side, slowly, slowly, so as not to seem rushed.)

"Who is he?"

(The swift backwards jerk of the thumb.)

"Him? No-one important. A scientist. Ex-peace corps. A wasted talent, of course. Hostage survivor. Part of the whole Shadow Moses episode, or so I hear. Traumatized completely. Here as an advisor. Why, do you recognize him?"

Talk about a difficult answer to a difficult question.

"Think I'll go say hello." Snake muttered, hoarsely. He could barely hear the colonel's reply over the sound of his own heart.

He walked, so he wouldn't run. The slim hands. The eyes, hazy, a mass of grey, behind the glasses. The smile- hesitant, as though something would chase it away any second now. There was something here he recognized. Memories started to drip back, as silvery and insubstantial as mercury in an hourglass.

"Do I know you?" he said, raising a hand in greeting.

A hand was offered back, and the smile, like the bushel being raised from the light, crept towards full luminescence.

"I… I think you do." Came the quiet voice, the voice which hinted at much.

Their hands met.

"Michel…" said the hesitant smile. "From the SETA office, right?"

Something had been building. It was. He could feel it. And now…

He let his hand slip from the other man's grip.

"I'm sorry." For who? "I've mistaken you for someone else."

He left. He left behind the lights, and the noise, and the Colonel's furious stare, and the delicate negotiations, and the sparkling chatter, and the stupid fucking food and the pointless, pointless luxury of it all.

Timeline A: (x-y)=0.4 (11:17) (N:corrupt)…

(Away on the other side of the room, the older man shook his head, trying to dislodge a memory that had never existed. He was still frowning at the floor when a strong arm landed heavily on his shoulder...  
And drew him close.  
"What is the problem, Emmerich?" just the hint of the accent here, framing her words rather than marring them.  
"You knew, huh?"  
"It's hard to miss when you're this close." Her blonde hair sat lightly on his shoulders.  
"I have the sneaking suspicion that I've met that guy before, but I just can't think where."  
The beautiful traitor laughed.  
"I'm not interested. It's time to feed the family." She said, pulling him close.  
"تعال ، أمريكية." she said. "غدا هو يوم الجمعة ، فطيرة الراعي."

They left early, as married couples are wont to do.)

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Because even in some parallel universes, Otacon got to hit it, yay, and even to put a ring upon it.


	5. 2: White Wedding

Timeline B: (x-y)=0.95 (1:13) (N:corrupt)

The priest…

Or was he a preacher? The term, strictly speaking, is denominational; and yet there is something buried deep in the human understanding, the bones of the brain as it were, that tell us this is not so. A "priest", we know, is haughty and ascetic; much given to the swirling of robes and the flouting of incense; one imagines a hawk nose, a book on divinity, and threateningly-twirled chasuble. "Out, out of this house of God" type stuff. (This we know in the same way we know that a "vicar" is mild-mannered, wears a dog collar, collects stamps or butterflies, and is forever getting accused of innocent mischief with the housekeeper, usually in a broom cupboard. It simply _is_.)

Now a preacher; there is the meat of the discussion. A preacher, the inner critic says, must be wild-eyed, and much weathered. A ragged grey beard, one suspicious stone-grey eye peering out of a mass of wild white hair. Half a pint of whisky hidden inside a hollowed-out bible and a shotgun down the trouser leg. Much given to rhetoric, and the casting-out of demons. Grizzled, in short. And often guardian of a remote and distant parish.

So we can take comfort in knowing that while the man in question was a priest by divine selection, he was a preacher, as it were, in spirit.

Good. Glad we got that sorted out.

The preacher scratched at his grizzled grey beard, took a gulp from the bottle of Divine Spirit he kept under the lectern for help in Trying Times. He was suspicious. He had not seen hide nor hair of a human supplicant in close to a month (though he had enjoyed giving a fire-and-brimstone sermon on Repentance For The Fleshly Sins to a snow fox that had wandered in out of the cold,) and he was beginning to suspect that he was either (A) going mad or (B) that he had definitely filled in the wrong form at the job office. To suddenly have this young couple, windswept and bedraggled though they were, turn up on the doorstep of the Last Chance Alaskan Pentecostal Church ("cradle to coffin, we git r dun" was the slogan) and demand a wedding - "as quick as you can"- made this one of the oddest ceremonies he'd ever had the misfortune to preside over.

The girl picked impotently at her nails. In deference to the alleged occasion, she had tried to spruce herself up- so in lieu of a bouquet, she had grabbed up a handful of conifer branches, and she had run stiffened fingers through her auburn hair in a futile attempt to tidy it up. Unfortunately, this had an effect that could be kindly described as "interesting" and unkindly described as "antagonistic". She had been waiting now for ten minutes.

Ah, yes. That was the other strange thing about this alleged wedding.

"My dear," the preacher had said, unfamiliar circuits sparking in his head as he attempted, for the first time in a long time, to be avuncular, "I'll admit that I ain't done my lion's share of wedding before, this countryside being what it's like, all death-dealin' and such; but I'm definitely sure that, in a wedding, more than one person is supposed to be involved. More than that, even," he said helpfully, "if you're a Mormon."

"Oh, don't worry," the girl had said flatly. "He'll be here."

Twitch, twitch. Pick, pick. The girl seemed incapable of standing still. He rallied his meagre forces for another attempt at tact.

"You know," he said thoughtfully, leaning on the pulpit in the much-celebrated manner of Abbott preparing the wind-up, "I've heard of weddings where the young man just never showed up; can you believe that? Just upped and walked away, never to be seen again. Now," he said, warming to his theme, "it's never usually the poor _woman's_ fault-"

"Hush." She said, tensing. He hushed; but couldn't hear the noise she was straining towards; some bruise in the air just beyond hearing. Ah, he thought. The stress; she's hearing things. Probably all in her mind. There will be some _psychology _at the foot of this, mark my words. (The preacher believed very strongly in Psychology; he believed it was the root of all evil, and a key part in humanity's inability to get up and just walk it off. He wound up for the pitch again: ) "-usually if the- _aherm_- pitter-patter of tiny feet has begun to pitter-patter just a _little_ too early-"

She held up an admonitory palm. Given that the arm which joined the palm was roughly twice the size of his own, he abruptly complied. She narrowed her gaze at what seemed to him to be an empty, if shadowed, corner of the room. He was about to ask-

The pine sprigs fell away in a shower of green needles. In a single movement, she had drawn and sighted with a small but serviceable handgun at the offending corner. She did not look like she was joking.

"Snake!" she hollered. "On the ground, NOW!"

One of the shadows hovered, uncertain. She gestured with the gun.

"I'm not kidding around, Snake!"

The shadow paused.

The gun made a ratchet noise as it was cocked.

The shadow detached itself, and walked sullenly forwards. It resolved itself into the shape of the mildly-perturbed looking young man who had schussed up to the front door of the church earlier that day, riding that snowmobile with the young lady on pillion. He still did not look happy.

"I don't like ceremonies", he muttered, approaching the altar, hands up.

"But you're doing this for me, of course." Ratchet. "Sweetie."

"Hmmph. The registry office not good enough for you?"

"Not good enough for my parents. My mother would have never forgiven me."

"Meryl-"

"Please. David?"

There was a pause. The great welling quietude of the Alaskan countryside rolled over and around them as volumes were spoken without words.

"…Of course."

The preacher quivered gently, like a larch in the breeze, as a gun snapped forward to face him.

"But as little ceremony as you can manage please, Father."

"I quite agree," said Meryl, also levelling her weapon at the gently-cardiac-arresting man of the cloth. "_If _you please, Father."

This, at least, he could do. Vibrating gently, he spread his arms in a generally-benevolent and hopefully non-threatening arc.

"Dearly… eh…" he looked around the church; empty except for the same sanctified snow fox, who did indeed seem interested in proceedings, "… beloved. Ahem. We are gathered here today…"

He turned an interesting shade of sickly beige as the gun barrel nudged him in the nose. In a fluid movement, he skipped over a half-a-dozen pages of the hymnbook. He looked down, (breathed a sigh of relief,) and continued; "And so, by the power vested in me…"

The wedding breakfast, (afterwards), came from a tin, and restored quite a lot of health when it did.


	6. 3: AbortRetryFail?

Timeline B: (x-y)=0.5 (/:11) (n:corrupt)

Does this seem familiar to you?

Bodies in rubble of military base. The dogs were sent in. Aid workers stood by, ill at ease. Stick-thin bodies: of hostages, rescuers pulled out. Barely recognizable. (Hardly human.) Some only identified by teeth, glasses. Positive match: Hal-

(Important point to make at this juncture: Time fairly hardy old beldame. Not so pliant to cocky young species like humanity. If celebrated "trousers of time" exist, are corduroy- resistant to tears, bifurcations. Motivation to make "time machine", such as is, not enough; _potential_ to make time machine very important. Only one man in history of world with potential to make time machine. Does he? Does he hell. Killed in accident. Shadow Moses. Returned for survivors. "Cleansing purge" by enemy fanatics. Senseless waste. Humanity's loss.

Snake dies in Sudanese war, 2015.

No perfect moment in war.)

This thread goes out immediately, before started. Continue/Exit?


	7. 4: Thank Heaven

Timeline C: (x-y)=0.8 (50:12) (n:corrupt)

This story is about a little girl. It could be about any one of those little girls. But it isn't. It's about one in particular. That one.  
As of yet, she does not have a name.  
It was the first face she had seen in days. At least, the first face that didn't flash and flicker on her computer screen; the first that didn't offer only praise or commands in a curious blank monotone, indifferent to her vocal responses.  
The kindly, silver-haired man, the one she had been told she must never, _ever_ talk to, had opened the door, and said to her, in a raspy kind of a voice-  
-Hello, little girl.  
and:  
-Isn't it _dark_ in here?  
At this point, of course, she had been paralysed into complete helplessness. He had done the strangest thing, then. He had smiled. And he had said:  
-Well _you're_ quiet, aren't you?  
She was. There was a pause.  
-Well, sometimes it's better to be quiet, he said gallantly. -Otherwise, people find things out; and that's not good, is it?  
She said nothing.  
He had extended a gloved hand to her, then.  
-Won't you come outside?  
She was terrified beyond belief of the world beyond the doors; not through conditioning, but through choice, as people did not ask difficult questions when she was indoors, did not tell her things that suggested a huge, scary unknowable _thing_ beyond the walls she was used to. The outside, it was a whole, big... _other_.  
But the man she must never, ever talk to seemed so kind; and wasn't that all right?  
She followed him, squinting dizzily at the bright sunlight of the courtyard. Even Russian summer had the nip of cold in the air, this high in the mountains, and the sun shone hard and merciless through the clear, cold air.  
He had silver hair, like her.  
In fact, he had it tied up in a thick, silver rope that hung down to the back of his jacket, a bit like the tail of an animal.  
The look of it was so odd that it made her laugh, a little bit.  
He turned, hearing that, and smiled as broadly as she did.  
-Ah! You're laughing. The little mouse has a voice. Shall I make you laugh some more?  
He had crouched down beside her.  
-Then I shall tell you my name. My name, little girl, is "Shalashaska." _Shalashaska_. Can you say that?  
As a matter of fact, she couldn't. The word tickled her mouth and made her laugh, and the more she laughed the more it tickled, and so she laughed more, and so on. Her speech impediment, always ready to take advantage of a moment of stress, leapt in, and (before long) she was reduced to a string of helpless "Sssss"'s by the very way he said it, repeating each syllable, teasingly, until he hissed like a snake.  
- I _thought_ you couldn't, he had said, with some satisfaction. -Very few people can pronounce _my_ name. In fact, very few people _know_ my name. Even less my other, special names.  
-Now you, he said sadly, -you don't have a name, do you? Not even one.  
She shook her head. No.  
-Well, he said, I shall give you one. You are _Myshka_; 'little mouse'. How does that suit you, Myshka?  
She was thrilled beyond words, actually. A name! A mouse sounded like a good thing to be, as well. They were small, and didn't get in the way. Wasn't that so? She nodded accordingly.  
-And so, Myshka, now you have a name, you tell me; who are you?  
Ah. This was going to be a sticking point.  
She could feel her cheeks redden, begin to burn with shame; how desperately she wanted not to disappoint the kindly stranger! And yet she couldn't answer. Oh no. Perhaps if she failed in this, he would go away. Maybe he wouldn't come back. Tears began to well, thick and unapologetic, in her eyes.  
-There's no need for that, he said. -Just start from the beginning. With your family, for instance. Tell me what you know about your family.  
Sniffling, she tried. Opening her mouth to speak felt odd; it was like opening a gate that had long since consigned to being rusted shut. Indeed, a rusty-spring noise came from her throat when she began to speak, but she swallowed it down and tried again, so as not to disappoint the man.  
"I... I only had a mother. Sh-She was a soldier," she said. "But they took me away from her before I ever m-m-met her."  
-Really? he said.  
And there was a pause there.  
-And your father? What do you know about your father?  
"No", she said, verbal resources exhausted. "I mean, n-n-not a father. I- I didn't have one."  
And he had sat down beside her, then, and passed a square of white cloth for her to dry her eyes on.  
-Well, I tell you what, he had said, a few minutes later, when she felt a little bit better, and she had stopped crying. -I'll tell you this. You know the men that take care of this place?  
She nodded.  
-They've sent me to meet you for _a very special reason _indeed, I think; do you know what that reason is?  
She didn't know.  
-Because the very same thing happened to me, when I was young, he said, gravely. -Some people took me away from my mother, too. And _she_ was one of the best soldiers. And my father is just a memory, to some; indeed, even to me. I never met him. Now, what do you think of that? I'm an old man, a very old man indeed; and I've never even met my mother.  
She patted him solemnly on the knee, with one babyish hand; his knee being just about the only bit of him she could reach.  
"That's very sad for you", she had said, solemnly, and she meant it.  
- And I think the kind men who run this place have brought us together for a very special reason, he said, equally solemnly. Would you like to hear my theory?  
She nodded.  
-I am an old man, he had said. Did you hear my knees snap when I knelt down there? You did. Wasn't it like a firecracker going off? As I say, I am a very old man. And, well, I'm sorry to say that I probably don't have long to live.  
She gasped; clung at his arm; she wrung his handkerchief in agitation. "No! Don't say _that_!"  
-Oh, but I am. And what the heads of this place- the kind men who brought us together- want, is somebody to replace me, when I am gone to my rest.  
She stared, uncomprehending.  
-Now you, he said, you are very good with the computers, are you not?  
Suddenly, she had looked away, a pinkish bloom spreading across her spare, unhealthy cheeks like the thin wash of a paintbrush. He had laughed.  
-Now don't blush, little mouse! Isn't it true? he laughed. -You are much better at computer-work than an old codger like me; indeed, better than a lot of the people here! And that is what the world is about now; computers, is it not? Computers will run the world, one day! So, what would you say to that?  
Before she knew what to say, he had knelt in front of her then, his blue eyes to her brown.  
-You would have to start the training young, though, as I did. he said quickly, urgently. -Would you be able to do that? Would you see the outside world, and not turn away? Would you do the jobs I have done, and see the things I have seen? To help the kind men who have raised you- raised _me_- to help them save the world?- Would you be strong enough, Myshka?  
She hadn't even to think about it. She flung herself forward, landing untidily, as children do, her arms around his neck, ignorant of the new sensation of another human being.  
He had said to her, though it was muffled, -That will be enough, little mouse.

As she had been sent to her new quarters, all whirling skirts and hesitant, halting chatter, he had thought; thank god she did not refuse.  
And as she met the strange, somehow faceless men and women who would be her only contacts for the next ten years or so, he had thought; for both of us.  
And as he signed a small piece of paper (they made it legitimate, somehow; a human being is culpable, but paper can only tell the truth), and as he walked away from the grey, anonymous walls of the training base, even as he thought back to the last glimpse of a soft, white face he had seen through a closing door, he recalled a snatch of song, something left over from his days _v Amerike_: "one day will flash/ and send you crashing through the ceiling..."  
But he frowned; he couldn't remember the rest; not in English, anyway.

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Allegedly Sunny was kept as a "computer worker" by the patriots before her rescue. I thought, given the Patriots' track record with the children they seem to acquire, Sunny (unrescused) would have eventually undergone a process similar to Ocelot. Meh. An idea, nothing more.  
Also, I remind you that if you actually try this scene with Ocelot's real voice- the full, larynx-shredding, juice-wringing, scenery-chomping large-ham-with-everything Patrick-Zimmerman voice- it becomes_ hilarious_. Well, more hilarious than it is already; but intentionally this time. Try it, but do keep some cough drops on hand.


	8. 5: Here's to You

Timeline D: (x-y)=0.9 (1:12) (n:corrupt)

No matter what anybody tells you, New York _is_ lovely this time of year.  
Hal put the phone down. "Well, I should think that's it." he said.  
"I'm not surprised. David growled. "We did everything except crash the damn plane into their radar dishes."  
David was sulking. In a very pronounced way. Sulking and smoking. He was smoking in a very pronounced way, too. The forces combined were- overpowering to say the least. The atmosphere was literally and figuratively poisonous.  
Hal waved himself a path through the stinking cloud, sat at the table.  
"You know, you chose this too, you know."  
The apartment, such as was, had been stripped of furniture in preparation for their departure, and the table, chairs and few oddments of technology were all that remained, besides the suspicious crack in the drywall and the patch of god-knows-what that had been quietly growing and developing sentience on the kitchen countertop.  
A great sigh escaped the low-slung figure.  
"Yeah, yeah," he said, grinding the cigarette out in a fairly descriptive manner. "Under duress."  
Hal looked around, more for something to do. He took note of the bare walls, the joyless institution green colour of the paint.  
"Well, they'll be here soon." he said "why don't we go outside?"  
"Outside?" David said.  
"Yeah. None of this will matter anymore," he said, cheerfully indicating the remains of their possessions, "so why don't we just lock up and, ah, get going?"  
"Yeah, alright." he said, heaving himself upright. He shrugged on a coat as Hal collected phone, wallet, ID, so on.  
The door was locked with a certain amount of finality. Hal slipped the key under the doormat. David was… jumpy. Not more so then he usually was when outside, but he seemed to have something on his mind. The words- more a confession- escaped his lips seemingly before he could control them.  
"My favourite Walther", he lamented, as Hal locked the door.  
"My 21IKP laptop with the custom 4.2 installer drive."  
"Those tapes left over from Big Boss' Virtuous mission."  
They began to walk.  
"The interesting blueprints I found for the original Shagohod model."  
"The plane. Oh boy, the plane."  
"You had just got it the way you want it. All my books."  
"My old pre-nano codec earphones. Those had sentimental value."  
"All the Patriot names I had stored on the old grey laptop."  
"That interesting rock I found."  
"Sunny's Lovely Princess DVDs."  
"My STABO harness."  
"You never liked that thing anyway. You said it was uncomfortable in the worst way."  
"Yes. But it was well made."  
Pause.  
"Those mission tapes from the Tanker. We never did figure out what the fake Roy was talking about."  
"This is the way the world ends/this is the way the world ends/ this is the way the world ends/ not with a bang but with a whimper." Hal quoted with relish.  
David looked at him with frank suspicion. "Hal, was that- a _poem_?"  
"Let me guess- on the battle field, there's no time for poetry?"  
"Oh, I wouldn't say that. Some of Wilfred Owen is pretty good."  
They settled on chairs outside a relatively trustworthy cafe that (they knew from experience) stayed open well into the small hours, and did not mind wild-eyed demands for immediate coffee from irate, under-pressure, under-caffeinated otaku.  
Hal surveyed the bustling roads in front of them as David lit a fresh cigarette, and continued his attempt at the world brooding record. (Which he had started, by Hal's estimation, in 1998 and kept up solidly since.)  
Hal foolishly tried to lighten the mood.  
"There now, you see? You've got- um- fresh air, and ah- a nice place to sit down, and-well. A lot of people in foreign countries would give-"  
"Hal, you are being deliberately optimistic and cheerful. And I won't have it." Snake said flatly, shaking away a match.  
"Well, shouldn't I be? Look- nice day, plenty of crowds about, the scenery-" he paused, looking at the leafy expanse across the road. "You know, I don't care what anyone says, New York really is the greatest city in the world."  
"And now you're just trying to provoke me with blatant untruths."  
Sirens sounded in the distance. Something- (and it must have been a pretty substantial something, considering-) was cleaving a path through the New York traffic.  
"Shall we order?"  
"I think not now." Snake stretched lazily, feeling the crack and pop of bones resettling.  
A furore was roaring further down the street. Many voices were going up- in protest, in command, in pacification, a certain strident military edge to most. Otacon tugged at his cuff thoughtfully. Snake shifted slightly.  
"Are you ready?"  
"What, in general? No, never."  
Snake frowned. He had always suspected that Hal's bumbling, slightly naif personality traits were protective disguise for the sharp-faced, sharp-voiced man who was capable of shaping a handful of numbers and blue paper in the Gears, and who answered questions in that frankly insolent manner. However, he had conceded to himself, if so, it was a pretty damned effective disguise. One does not see a man absentmindedly stir salt into his coffee and sugar his fries without getting to know a measure of him.  
"I mean, are you ready for_ this_?"  
"Hmmm... for this, I think always. I was always ready. And you?"  
"Always. And for this, never."  
Otacon began to respond, but he could only mouth the words as sirens and officious panic drowned out the soft tail-ends of his voice.  
(Even as rapid-response vehicles and armoured cars came screaming down the street, he was smiling.)  
With a great "kachung", some frankly unnecessary spotlights sprung to life, focused on the two small figures sitting quietly by the road. Unconsciously, Hal loosened a button on his coat, trying to make it clear that the bulky coat concealed nothing suspicious/ he carried nothing suspicious concealed under the arm or at the hip. Raised voices were now directed at them, a great jumble of orders and countermands- to "get on the ground", to "freeze", to "not try anything funny", a phrase that in context, Snake had never understood. Right at the moment, he couldn't have thought of a joke if his life depended on it. As a matter of fact, every instinct in his body was telling him to run and hide in a cool, dark place until all the noise and shouting stopped.  
Hal stood slowly, arms raised clear above his head, squinting into the harsh light, his body cutting long, lean shadows over the wall behind them. ("I bet the first thing he'll do is apologise to his arresting officer," Snake thought.)  
(Um, sorry..." said Hal to the combat-stanced figure behind the spotlight...)  
He contemplated the glowing end of his cigarette, which was glowering a contented red about halfway down. A part of his smoker's soul rebelled at leaving it half-finished, although the starred-and-barred commander with the over-large gun shouting at him to "drop it" would probably disagree. Still, this particular brand- got in Canada or Cuba or somewhere, one never know where one picks up these odd bits and pieces- tended to smoke very bitter, towards the end. Or so he remembered.  
Besides, it really_ was _time for him to start thinking about giving up.  
He smiled at that, as the young SWAT officer (who, he was gratified to notice, was shaking at the knees a bit- who needs a gun when you have reputation?) slowly advanced, trying to confirm that he (Snake) was not going to suddenly turn into a whirling ball of knives, gun and hurt, as he was rumoured to do. He smiled as the young man put the cuffs on him, and even as the relieved voice politely asked if Mr, eh, Snake, would be so good as to step this way, please, sir. Because-  
Because even over the roar and skitter of the bullhorns (obviously they had been expecting some greater resistance than a semi-pensioner and a greying otaku who, even now, was commenting amiably on the Comms.' nice ANTD laptop), he could hear an elderly proprietorial voice from the café, behind him say:  
"What? _Those_ guys?"

A pause, to consider it.  
"Nah, there's gotta be some kinda mistake here..."

Can one not now hear the chatter of the media- the click of the cameras, the rattle of shutters, the on-the-spot reporter now truly on the spot outside the courthouse- "and yes, we're seeing the suspects now-" a meek brown-haired man in chains, stumbling slightly, blinking in the sunlight- "(surely he's not-) and yes, that is the suspect now"- flexing his wrists at the unfamiliar bite of the cuffs- the roar and swirl of the press of bodies- all rather overwhelming- one of the most dangerous men in the world? And now, being escorted- well, being helped, really, though one would not believe it- an- how shall we say it? An older man- but yes, with a much more of a look about him- see the great breadth of the shoulders, even withered, but made to bear weight- the hands, all rough and scarred- here is no hero- here is a terrorist, one who brings terror indeed. "I don't mind telling you that the guards look nervous- and yet "when they don't have a walking death machine to do their bidding, ha"- how odd that they should so meekly go- ah, but see how the older man rebels- throws a hand of his shoulder- strides tall- well, tall as he can- how, even with the restraints, the other suspect lays up a calming hand- muttered words- but still he walks taller than he should- or is that just my eyes- as the doors close, all we can see is a flash of eye- a muttered word, no longer than a heartbeat, is heard- "given the case, I'm told, from here straight to the place of execution-"  
"strictly, _not_ an American citizen, but in this case-"  
"Slightly unbelievable story, all told-"  
"verdict through-"  
"small child currently under care-"  
"mitigating circumstances, _denied_-"  
And the last thing seen as the doors close is a flash of eye-  
not one of defiance-  
for how can one be defiant when one is right?

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

So here's how it went down  
(Some weeks ago.)  
Internet: Hey, fun fact- talk about "dodging a bullet." At the end of MGS4, Snake and Otacon were going to give themselves up as "terrorists", and get executed for their troubles.  
Me: WAT  
Internet: It never got done though, obviously, because, aside from other things, the gamefaqs message boards would have rent in twain under the pressure and released Gol-goroth, Keeper of the Black Stone, into our dimension. So yeah, the only thing that's left is the song about two criminals being wrongly executed at the end.  
Me: ...J-joan Baez was... giving silent consent to this monstrosity? I must hear that again...  
(Youtubery follows.)  
Me: (listening): (sob, sob, choke, sniffle) AH HA HA HA WHO THE HELL ARE NICOLA AND BART HA HA HA (again, choke sob, sob, repeat 'til finish.)  
Hence.

More to follow.


	9. 6: The Mathematician's Answer

6: The Mathematician's answer.

Timeline E: (x-y)=0.001 (life:4/11) (N:corrupt)

Liquid smiled an easy smile.  
"Ah, yes- I sadly, am not the practical type." He stretched lazily, causing the other man to shudder violently.  
"No," he said sweetly, "I was raised to the finer things, you know. Cold showers. Constant beatings. The threat of imminent, miserable death around every corner. You know; the typical English boarding school life. I have spent my whole life learning, in exquisite ways, how to kill people. Now that is a_ useful _skill, yes; but not a _practical_ one."  
He leaned backwards in his chair, and glared thoughtfully at the ceiling.  
"For example, when one is sent to pick up a pint of milk, it is never necessary to kill anyone."  
He frowned at an innocent ceiling tile.  
"They never let me back in that corner shop."  
The shadow in the corner said nothing.  
"So you! You were raised to be practical."  
He spun in his chair, flashing a toothpaste-advertisement-grade smile at the figure in the corner. "Isn't that right?"  
"That's right," came the voice.  
"So what, dear, dear engineer, would you have me do about this annoying intruder here?" he said, tapping at the dome of the radar screen in front of him.  
Dr Emmerich emerged from the shadows, leaned thoughtfully on the back of Liquid's chair.  
He frowned at the blip on the radar.  
"Have him killed."  
He frowned again, calculating speed and direction.  
"At once."

(It had not been difficult to figure that the one who called himself Liquid was… well, you know. The point had first been drawn to his attention by a co-worker, at the coffee machine.  
The way most office gossip starts. The guy- what was his name?- had sidled up, mock-casual, thrown an elaborate glance over his shoulder, and said in a conspiratorial whisper:  
"The boss," his fellow engineer had hissed, "I think he's… you know."  
Otacon had blinked. Once. Twice.  
"Well, I should think so," he said slowly, "I mean, the way he bounces around here without a shirt on and everything..."  
"No, I mean," the other man continued, looking casually over his shoulder, all the subtlety of a pantomime dame, "I don't think he's entirely legit."  
"legit?"  
"Well… He did kidnap us."  
"There's that."  
"He does kinda talk an awful lot about revenge…"  
"Granted."  
"Keeps a lot of hired guns around the place…"  
"Could be…"  
"And then there's the, uh-"  
"The shirt thing, yeah…"  
Otacon stirred. Thought.  
"Well, he did let us keep the coffee machine. There's that."  
Ever the optimist. The other engineer was sweating, now, as he toying mock-casually with some non-dairy creamer. "So- so do you trust him or don't you?"  
Hal thought. Gave what was technically a perfect answer.  
"Yes."  
And left.  
A few days later that engineer had disappeared. It was never really discussed where he went to.

It was because, as he had sat at his desk, toying idly with the blueprints (trying to decide where to put the radome, but surely that wasn't so important) he had remembered, vaguely, the old adage to "judge a man by the company he keeps." Convinced that this seemed a logical proposition, he had done so.

Grenade wielding shaman, insane stalker-sniper, shape-shifting rat, and Psycho Mantis, who got crumbs _everywhere_. And then of course, when the call came through for REX … Well, the connection was obvious. One does not watch even half a Bond movie without figuring out where _that_ was going. And then of course, the counter-argument; that one should know a man by his enemies. He had asked around, as casually as he could, for the one they called Liquid's story.  
Wow.  
Talk about sibling rivalry.  
He sympathised, to a degree. And of course, wasn't this Liquid guy the only one who had been honest to him? The one had had come back, pulled up a chair, looked him in the eye and told him about the threats REX was facing from some meddling government agency? No man, after all, likes to see a good piece of work destroyed. And Rex, who had such _sentimental_ value...  
(He didn't mind the other man using the project's pet name; after all, Liquid had been present at nearly every stage of the code's completion. He certainly seemed very concerned, anyway.)

He asked his opinion on things, as time went on. The engineer had advised him on security placements, guard rotation and, later, explained a few flaws in the masterplan using a sheet of foolscap and an eighth-grade textbook on genetics. Eventually, Liquid had, as it were, popped the question. He assumed what seemed to Hal to be an overly dramatic pose, and said something like:  
"Will you help me seek vengeance against the corrupt society that created me, or ruin me; turn yourself in to those laughing jackals from the military, and be damned?"  
He talked like that, sometimes. There seemed to be no way of stopping it.  
Hal had paused for thought, then. The- how to put it- _terrifying illegality_ of his actions, should be he captured, would no doubt call his motivation into question. And something was telling him that it was not the best idea to pin his hopes on the illegal clone mutant with the questionable fashion sense. In response, he gave the only answer he was really comfortable with.  
"Yes." He said finally.

It's good to be king.  
It's good to recklessly abuse your power to the extent that everyone you employ cowers as you walk past.  
In fact...  
It's _fabulous_.  
It would not be inaccurate to say that Liquid flounced down the corridor. Now, that is not a verb to be used lightly. Indeed, the flounce is a manoeuvre not to be undertaken lightly; if done, it must be done with full gusto and verve, otherwise the intended effect is lost and one looks rather silly.  
Having shepherded a disparate group of mercenaries over to a remote Alaskan island that (besides having a lovely view of the freezing ocean and the best little cafe on the coast) also acted as the disarming point for a certain country's nuclear missiles, and begun on that island the breeding of a new strain of super (though not very bright) soldiers-  
if he had done all that with his shirt off-  
well, he felt entitled to a tiny little flounce.  
Just a wee one.  
And speaking of feeling entitled...  
He flounced over to the door of the R&D labs; shooed away the purple and blue blur that was literally bouncing of the walls. He wrenched open the door of the locker triumphantly.  
"You breath just _far_ too loud."  
The shape at the bottom of the locker said nothing.  
"Leave me alone," it said, finally.  
Liquid considered.  
"No."  
"I have... important work to get done." he said listlessly. "You know. Missiles. Gyroscopes. Getting the keys cut. That kind of thing. You'd be surprised, but creating a two-legged harbinger of nuclear death on a freezing Alaskan island is quite difficult."  
"Well, with_ that _attitude, of course it is."  
The other man sighed. "I ask you once more if you think you'll be able to finish this project without your chief engineer."  
"I don't need you", pouted Liquid, "I just need your brain."  
"No," the other man had said flatly. "You need me."  
Liquid considered.  
"True", he said brightly. "I do. In fact, I need you so much that if you don't come with me now, I'm going to hurt you! Quite badly. So come on. The soldiers caught him, the intruder; he's in the interrogation room."

He had escaped, somehow. God only knows; being strapped to a table in a brightly-lit room is usually, you know, reasonably secure. Nevermind. It was another problem to be dealt with, nothing more. The fact that the problem was standing not twelve feet away holding an increasingly shaky gun was a minor detail. He kept his hands in full view as he spoke.  
"Me? Pacifist? Oh, you misunderstand me, David. I'm here voluntarily." He glanced across the floor to the blonde figure semi-ensconced in the shadows. A glimmer of tooth was all that showed of a smile. He shivered; the spasm was involuntary and sudden.  
"_More_ than voluntarily."  
The FOXHOUND man had betrayed disbelief, then, from under furrowed brows.  
"So- so are you on this maniac's side or not?"  
He frowned. Rolled the idea around in his head for a second. Wouldn't have put it like that.  
So he gave what was (_technically_) a perfect answer.  
"Oh, yes." He said brightly.  
The figure in the shadows grinned all the wider, and raised a half-hidden hand.  
A dozen little clicks- the kind of little clicks you will hear in your nightmares, if you have the knowing of them- indicated that a dozen or so hidden guns had swung into play.  
"Very much so, yes." He said, as the noise died down.

A team of black specks scurried across the screen now, in and around the shadowy form of the walking tank, apparently unaware that they were being watched. Liquid smiled a cold, easy smile; the kind of smile cats give to Kings, presumably because they know something the monarch doesn't. He smiled too; well, his thin lips curled upwards, exposing his teeth.  
"Let them see this beginning."  
And pressed the button. There was a throaty rumble, growing to a roar, as Rex sprang to life.

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Because if it's Dom!Otacon...  
It's a CRACKFIC (tm).  
Because if the pairings has absolutely *no* search results on ...  
It's a CRACKFIC (tm).  
Because if you have to invent _an entire parallel universe _for it to happen in...  
It's a CRACKFIC (tm).  
This was a "challenge fic" in that I was challenged to do it and because, trust me, it was a challenge to write... The idea was that the climax of the alternate-worlds should be the world where the creator- in this case, Otacon; is shown to be completely opposite to his character in-game. That is to say, an apathetic, amoral, intentional dealer of death and destruction.  
Also, I didn't _mean_ to write Liquid Snake as a terryingly camp cross betwee Dr. Frank N'Furter and Midnight Mink from _Bratpack_, but it just... kept... _happening_.


	10. 7: Deliberatly Generic

For all the times it could have happened.

Timeline F: (x-y)=0.9 (life=1:11) (n:corrupt)

Have you ever watched the one you love do what they were trained to do?

Nanomachines never shut down. They are another thing that you just get used to.

Some people play music while they work at computers. Hal had the sharp hiss of tranquiliser darts, hoarse breathing and the shuffle-thump-crack of unwary guards being taught valuable lessons in alertness to keep him company. It was almost relaxing, in a Schoenburg kind of way. Having worked out several of the guard rotation plans himself, he would find himself subconsciously counting off the footsteps, muttering small triumphal "Yes!"-es whenever the sibilant hiss of a dart indicated that a gamble had paid off. One cannot help but join in the hunt- it is the same reason you find yourself leaning in the direction of racing cars as they go around the track.

And occasionally, of course, there were the bad times: where there should have been seventeen more steps and then the hiss of a door, he would hear the shriek of alarms and hoarse, guttural curse words (in Russian or Lithuanian or whoever had decided they needed a giant bipedal robot to make them feel better) and his heart would leap into his mouth, and he would jump to the active console, praying that this time wasn't the time, oh god oh god please don't let it be this time please oh god don't let it-

"Otacon. The codes aren't on this level."

And he would have to stop his voice from wavering, and he would pull up the required floor plans or scan for infrared beams or anything else, because he found his hands shook less on a keyboard.

Because at some point, training is not enough. No matter how good you are, however well you plan and train and work, how much you sweat over the details, eventually luck takes over. Hal was not comfortable with luck. It was a grey area. Binary didn't have grey areas. (Not until you get to the real freaky stuff anyway- Ed.) So it was easier, he found, in the long hours of the night, when the alarms started to caterwaul and his palms suddenly sprung into sweat and his hands, normally so sure, slipped and clattered on the keyboard, creating uncertainties- to think of each decisions that led up to that point as a binary decision. Two outcomes. One or zero. On or off. Dead or Alive. And that held back the fear, if only for a moment, because you could spend your time thinking which choice had gone wrong- which choice _you_ had _made_ go wrong- and ignore that the shifting, swirling grey fog of _circumstance, _that horrible non-entity, that hateful _thing_, that was in fact the cause of all the screaming, rather than your careful, rational house of sticks built on the swamp of real life. And hopefully, you would never have to face up to that fact that all your decisions and planning and sweat had boiled down to chance; a freak occurrence; a lazy guard or a repaired security camera, and that you had caused the death of a loved one.

There was no big pair of hands in the sky guiding you. There was no system you could study that would not eventually fall to entropy. And the human body- oh the human body- basically a _mass_ of twitchy, unstable on-off switches that demanded frankly unimaginable resources to work even reasonably well. If it was a PC, Hal would have long ago consigned it to the scrapheap as a marvellously designed but indulgent system.

That, he had found, was the effect of more than seven hours at the CODEC. Most of Snake's mission took ten hours. The crick in the back was _annoying_, but it was the lingering existential dread that really niggled at him.

But there was comfort to be had in goals achieved, threats evaded. And watching Snake at his work.

Hal knew he had a fairly focused mind, when _it came to certain subject_s. The differentiation was necessary, as many who had worked with him before had remarked. Uncharitably often, he felt. And _loudly_. He could expound for hours- wearying, tiresome hours, some had said- on the magic of C++ and how easy it made coding and how simple it was to do (It was usually at this point that his kind offer to demonstrate was turned down, and he usually adjusted his time accordingly) or on the really fascinating symbolism of the works of Hideako Anno, because of course the Christian cross is not such a widely recognised symbol in Japan, isn't that weird? So it's inclusion at several _key_ points in the Neon Genesis saga was almost _entirely_ random, and the imagery that our _western_ eyes drew from it offered an almost _unparalleled_ insight into the-

At this point, either he was told to shut up, or gun-wielding men burst into the room and started knocking him around- both had happened so often that he minded neither.

But this same mindset was tied to another- the other Hal- who could spend comfortably over fifteen minutes searching for his glasses before being reminded by a passing Samaritan that they were perched gently on top of his head, apparently quietly enjoying the view. So he knew instinctively that he would not make a good soldier, in the same way a rabbit will never stick two toothpicks in its upper lip and try to kid the other animals that it was a small, floppy-eared tiger.

But watching Dave move through obstacles to an objective was something of a comfort in the long hours. Hal appreciated fine art in the same way that, say, a duck would appreciate a new pair of dancing pumps, but he could see in Dave a kind of grace and purity of intent he had only seen before in the most highly trained dancers, or wild animals moving in for the kill. Seeing as how his own brain never really shut down, he was magnetically attracted to this silvery hunter's energy- where every thread of thought was drawn in the brain was drawn to one point at the instance of the kill.

...

The noise drew him back.

Shuffle, thump. Crackle, crackle hiss.

"Okay Snake, you're looking at a keypad now. Behind that door should be the plans for PRIME, so just key in the code that I showed you."

Pause. He shifted uneasily.

"Do you read?"

Nothing. Silence.

"Snake, do you read me?"

Nothing further. There might have been, in the background, the noise of boots, and congratulatory back-patting for the man who had brought down the intruder. That and dead air.

Panic started to well, hot and tight, in his throat. He tapped at the mic again, convinced he was missing something. Hoping he was missing something.

"Snake?"

"Snake!"


	11. 8: Ultimately

Timeline 1: (x-y)=1 (\life:1) (N:pure)

"The more excellent way's yet mine! And you  
Flower-laden come to the clean white cell,  
And we talk as ever - am I not the same?  
With our hearts we love, immutable,  
You without pity, I without shame.  
We talk as of old; as of old you go  
Out under the sky, and laughing, I know,  
Flit through the streets, your heart all me;  
Till you gain the world beyond the town."

"Paralysis", Rupert Brooke. (1916)

There is only one reality. Well, no, there are several, depending on who you believe, but the homing instinct is powerful. There are several timelines out there where grown Sunny skips playfully back to meet her uncles Hal and David at the gate, where they stand in proud silence (and itchy suits) as Sunny Gurlukovitch (Bisc.) mounts the dais to collect her twin diplomas in engineering and kickboxing ("She gets it all from me") . Where the nod-out happens thirty years alter, peacefully, in their own bed. There is also a reality where an ID-tagged Old Snake is finally crushed by the foot of Metal Gear PRIME in the Sudan Wars of 2015, and yet another where Hal gets his throat slit mid-mission by Goptani rebels. Some are happier, some are sad, however, the point remains- would you live through them again? Consider the vile and bizarre circumstances it would take to reach these points- no more vile or bizarre than the present time line, but to repeat it, over and over again, in the hope of finding amid all the sorrow and heartbreak and loss the one thread which tightropes between them all. Would it even be the same life? The same person?

Otacon is, at heart, a coward. The adventurer of the pair is gone now.

He enters the hospital room. The steady beep of machines accompanies his footsteps.

The figure wouldn't stir as he entered the room.

Not surprising.

He had been impossible to wake for hours at a time, recently. The doctors had tried everything, and in triple doses too, but were losing. Hal was not worried. They did not seem to realize that pettifogging things like high-strength chemical stimulants, semi-controlled electrical shocks and, on one mad afternoon, five minutes of pot-and-pan banging combined with sincere pleading from a man with more letters after his name than a terrible accident in a scrabble factory, would hardly effect Snake when he was in the mood for a good long sleep. Even his nervous system was stubborn like that.

Hal knew a method to wake him up. It was rather a cruel method, but he also knew it was effective. He cleared his throat.

'"?"' said Hal.

The snoring lump stirred. Hal cleared his throat again.

'"!"' said Hal.

Snake rocketed suddenly to a sitting position.

(The guard noises, like birdsong, are difficult to emulate, but well worth the effort to learn.)

The single still-functioning eye swept the corners of the room, and then settled on Hal. Recognizing him as no threat*, the glare turned down from Setting Seven (High Alert: Armed Patrol With Rottweilers Who've Just Found Out Santa Claus Doesn't Exist.) to Setting Three (Low Alert: We're Out Of Milk). His hand was still going for a gun that was no longer there.**

"You know, Pavlov would have a field day with you." Said Hal, pulling up a chair.

Snake was still muzzy, but rejoindered admirably.

"And Freud would just love you."

"No," said Hal, smirking "I think he would_ just love _your choice of words."

"Well, in about a year you'll be able to study psychology, like you wanted to. You can find out."

Hal steepled his fingers. "Why do you say 'within a year'?"

"Because," said Snake, "you'll have no other obligations by then."

Unsaid words hung heavy in the air; like unripe apples off the branch. The weight was crushing, as it had been for some time. Some things you don't say in polite company; however, they rarely had (indeed, rarely were) polite company; that wasn't been the problem. But…

There had always been something to do. Organizing a black-ops semi-terrorist anti Metal-Gear Peace Corps, to everyone's surprise, was rather time-consuming. They were apart often; Snake on a semi-safe, semi-insulated plane to somewhere remote and cold, Hal at home alternating between planning and worrying (usually about Snake). They were both champion procrastinators, and between them had maintained these thousand awkward silences and unvoiced fears, in the hope that one day, they would just go away.

They almost had.

The time to act had almost gone past.

Hal couldn't believe he had been so stupid.

He had leaned in close, glasses sliding down already. His hand was laid- not on- but near Snake's. Their two heads came together. And they began to talk, low voices murmuring together: tales of bravery, and devotion, and heroism, and The Right Thing. Anecdotes; filthy tales long gone, and the patter of soldiers, and monologues. And then gradually, voices softened, and then even wavered; devotion, and passion, and What Will Be. Two hands joined, clenched as though they might break.

Hal had popped the question. Dave, the one visible eye glittering, had looked at him as though personally offended.

"I would not have changed it," said Snake.

And that was the perfect moment.

* * *

*In the sense that he was a small bespectacled engineer smilingly appeasingly; being the creator of the world's most powerful armoured death-tank for some reason did not register on this particular scale. (In fact, it was too far off the charts to register, which just goes to prove that Snake wasn't stupid.)

** He had asked. Repeatedly. Pointedly. He had used sarcasm, and irony and everything. The doctors wouldn't let him.


End file.
